Self Managed Teams
Self Managed Teams Self-managed teams empower employees. Most often found in manufacturing, workers are trained to do all or most of the jobs in the unit, they have no immediate supervisor, and they make decisions previously made by first-line supervisors (Bateman, Snell, 2011). Self-managed teams offer a number of potential advantages that could be used at Sandwich Blitz; including stronger commitment, employee and customer satisfaction, improved quality, enhanced efficiency, and faster product and service development.
However, there are some drawbacks. Self-managed teams are difficult to implement, and failure is a risk when used in inappropriate situations, or without sufficient leadership. Some organizations have been disappointed with the results from self-managing teams. In the case of Sandwich Blitz, self-management teams may work to a certain extent, such as having the team members cross-trained to do various jobs.
This would increase the flexibility of the team in dealing with personnel shortages and some of the “little fires”, Dalman has to put out. Therefore, implementing Dalman and Lei’s knowledge of work processes with the teams would help the team members solve problems, and develop improvements. It would also help lower any absenteeism that may have existed in the past, which would free up some of Dalman and Lei’s time.
However, Dalman would have to select team members he would feel comfortable with, the latitude of issues that would need to be handled, and the continued existence of the team. As stated above, self-managed teams are difficult to implement, and Dalman would need to take that into consideration, as well as, be willing to invest some of his time into developing the team and then removing himself once he feels comfortable with team.
Business Week recently reported that self-directed work teams are, on average, 30 to 50 percent more productive than their conventional counterparts (Williams, 1995). References Bateman, T. S. , & Snell, S. A. (2009). M start here. Management. New York, New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Williams, R. (1995). Self-Directed Work Teams [Article]. In qualitydigest. com. Retrieved from http://www. qualitydigest. com
